Hi,

My current party consists of a Paladin, a Barbarian, a Ranger, a Cleric, a Druid and a Wizard. Cleric is my weakest character. I love the druid and I know that towards the end of the game the Wizard will be my most precious character. Barbarian is my tank and Paladin is a diplomat that supports my barb.

I was thinking to start another company with 1 Paladin, 2 Barbarians, 1 Druid and 2 Wizards.

Will I miss my Cleric? Druid can cast some healing.
Can any Wizard/Sorcerer school compensate for my not taking a Cleric with me?

PS: Never played with a Monk, yet.

Clerics are very strong, and though they aren't quite as strong in IWD2 as they are in the PnP version, they're still quite good. Their primary usefulness isn't even really the healing aspect (apart from Heal) but the buffing aspect. Their personal and party buffs can make an enormous difference, and even unbuffed they have decent combat ability.

You don't really NEED one though. Even a bard can usually supply adequate combat healing, and since there's never any time limits on anything you can just rest forever to heal up out of combat. The high-level spell selection for clerics is kinda weird as well, as they get more cool 8th level spells than they have slots for but they only get Gate (meh) at 9th level, which is very strange.

That party is very offensively oriented, so you might have some trouble with certain fights but honestly IWD2 isn't particularly hard with ANY 6-man group, so I wouldn't really worry about it. You can go cleric-free and do just fine, but you'll probably want to give your barbarians 1-2 levels of fighter each simply for the extra feats.


EDIT: Monks are terrible and you should ignore them. They're useful for passing the trials in the Monastery but they're incredibly lackluster at everything else. They're even more MAD (multiple ability dependent) than paladins are, and with a point-buy character creation system you'll never get their abilities up to where they need to be to compete with other classes. They don't even get the cool punch/kick animations from BG2! They just look like they're stabbing with invisible knives all day long.

I have a similar party like yours in one of my saves that is a warrior (tank ) , cleric , druid , rogue , wizard and ranger , i left that save to play another game and forgot how the story had gone , i have never beaten this game and i am close to now with a new safe :P

my new party is : warrior , barbarian , ranger , cleric , wizard and rogue , with this party i am doin much better , maibe i needed more strengh power in my last one haha , anyways like Bevinator say there is no time limit thankfully , because sometimes i need to rest after each map , if you dont feel like keeping the cleric since you like the druid , maibe having a rogue ? , i think rogue is a must allways because traps are nasty , offcourse maibe you are doin that allready with someone else in the party , i never multiclass for some reason i like keeping my class pure , maibe its a bad thing but it gets me trough the game xD , there are a lot of potions in the game so probably one can finish the game with any party , if you are far maibe its better to finish the game and start again with a diferent kind of party ;) , i know i will pick up my other part again as soon as i finish , to be honest i didint think i would like this game so much but its turning to be a hell of an expirience , good luck and happy gaming ,

One of the pregenerated parties doesn't have a cleric so you can do without one.

Cleric is usually considered rather an overpowered than underpowered class. If she's non-evil you don't have to memorize any healing spells and can simply convert other memorized spells for doing so and with a cleric in your party your druid doesn't have to bother with healing spells and can memorize others instead. The deity grants extra bonuses and an additional spell per level.
Consider your cleric as fighter who can increase her and the rest of the party's combat efficiency a lot by casting buffs before battle and heal after battle.

Long lasting buffs like bless, bull's strength, magic circle against evil cast after resting will make everyone far more effective during the travels, short lasting buffs like prayer or recitation can be cast before or at the beginning of a tough battle.
Animate dead can be cast to summon very powerful and long lasting allies and when a character dies in battle cleric is the only class which can cast raise dead afterwards.
Later you'll get heal and mass heal which can hundreds of hitpoints with a single casting during combat.

Your cleric has a lot of potential, even if you don't need it yet you might be happy about it later in the game.

One of the greatest joys of these games is being able to cast all the different kinds of spells, which are mainly the cleric's, the druid's, and the sorcerer/wizard's. Turn undead is USELESS in my experience with IWD2, so in that sense, you can drop a cleric's charisma to 3 to bring other scores higher. An ideal party includes a cleric, a druid, and a sorcerer or wizard. Because 9th level cleric spells are nothing (only "Gate", which "Animate Dead" can beat because you get more powerful undead as you go up in level) and a few simple ones depending on your domain, consider going up to 16th level as cleric, and any more levels as fighter. If you get to 20th level total, four levels as a fighter will give you three extra feats, including weapon specialization which will signfiicantly increase your damage, and +4 base attack which will help what you have already. "Mass Heal", an 8th level spell, is really the most powerful spell in the game IMO.

The other three classes I'd recommend would be a rogue/ monk, a ranger/ fighter, and a paladin/ fighter. You want a rogue because otherwise traps will hit you all the time, sometimes to very bad effects, and the sneak attack damage is nice to have.

I have to say I have always taken a cleric, usually Illmater, but im sure any would work. They get to wear heavy armor right off the bat can use shields and honestly only need 10 to 14 dex depending on if you can find full plate with +2 dex modifier. I only found that in the very end of the game so honestly i usually give 12. But there are times when the game was super easy fighting hoards of undead and her turn undead pops 95% and the few large undead that survive just walk away while you mow them down. They get great str buffs to put on the fighters if you have them. In my opinion two handed str fighters are super op all the way through the game. I could buff mine above 30 str by the end and there are great +5 two handers at the end. But clerics can also melee fight okay and can easily be super tanky while spontaneous casting heals whenever you want and you can heal up the party before a rest if you care about time at all. I'm not sure if there is anything right or wrong about taking 5 years or 3 months to finish the game, but you can rest in 8 hours every time with a single cleric. They can summon with the best of any caster. Just like in pen and paper they really are a huge help in any party.. Id feel really weak without one. Honestly I'm thinking of as a challenge trying a 5 cleric, one monk group just for fun. But honestly not really much of a challenge. Well at least on normal diff. But yeah clerics are awesome and think it would be a lil harder without one. My monk, 3 sorcerer, 2 mage team had a hard time without one in the early game. But thats the fun of it. We can do what we want. I saw a guy on youtube doing high level mode with a level one sorcerer by itself. Just summoned a billion guys over and over. Crazy town. he was level 17 at the palisade fight. I love it!

Did you have to necro a four year old thread to say that?

At least we know what his favourite school of magic is!

XD

I play IWD2 without cleric and it is just find - i am satisfied with Druid and Bard - they have some healing magic ... So I think Cleric is no needed ...

(Napolean Dynamite Voice) Heck yes I did!

True to form, that response was 3 months late.

First let me say I would be highly surprised if any class is "needed" to beat the game, even on Heart of Fury mode (though I would bet that certain party compositions would be insanely difficult to beat HOF with. Six pure warriors probably isn't gonna work well for you). Also some of this advice will apply more to HOF or certain strategies.

That said, personally I think Cleric is one of the *strongest* classes if not *the* strongest, and you are making the game substantially more difficult if you don't have at least one if not two. Here's why:

1. Clerics make decent melee fighters. While your unbuffed BAB and HP and so on won't be as good as a full warrior, it is close. Your BAB raises at 75% of a fighter's rate, and you get 80% of their base HP. This is before "Draw Upon Holy Might" or DUHM comes into play. This spell gives you +1 to each physical stat for every three levels. A level 24 cleric would receive a whopping +8 to their strength, dexterity, and constitution. This means your cleric will actually have substantially more HP than your warrior.

2. Saving throws. Each saving throw (fort, reflex, will) for each class can either be "strong" or "weak". Strong saving throws start at +2 and go up every other level; weak throws start at +0 and advance only every 3 levels. So for example a level 8 character would have +6 in their "strong" saves and +2 in their weak saves. Each class has at least one "strong" save (Monks have all three saves as strong saves). Clerics get 2 strong saves compared to warriors and sorcerers that only get one.

3. Spells. Clerics have some game-breakingly good spells that are either not available to other classes (DUHM) or available later (Heal/Mass Heal). One of the most effective strategies I have found in HOF uses a lot of the "Holy Word" spell, which is very effective if you have an all-good/neutral party, since most enemies are evil. It casts very quickly, stuns enemies in a AOE, and I think some enemies are immune to it, but I don't believe there is a saving throw on the stun. It gives you crucial breathing room in those massive fights to get off important spells (i.e. Wail of the Banshee).

My current party, designed to be as strong as possible for HOF, uses essentially 3 clerics, 2 sorcerers, and a wizard. One of the clerics is my "decoy" who will also have a bunch of monk levels. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this party to someone just starting, since the early game is a little tedious.

Hope this helps!

Another reason clerics are great: stats/synergy. First, there are opportunities throughout the game to permanently increase your stats. Wisdom is the stat that you will have the most opportunities to raise (a certain Cleric persuasion actually gets a special quest to raise their Wisdom). There's also potentially great synergy with taking a level of Monk, since you will be able to add your (potentially super high) Wisdom modifier to your AC. And while I *think* alignment restrictions allow you to mix Druid/Monk, Cleric allows you to take Monk AND Paladin splashes, which is quite strong.

Second, your starting stats are very easy and strong at the start of the game. Four "core" stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom) are effectively needed by all classes, because they add to your saving throws, HP, AC, and to hit rolls (and carry weight). Charisma and Intelligence are "situational" stats that are only needed by some classes. Cleric does not need them so your starting stats can look like this:

Str: 18
Dex: 16
Con: 18
Int: 3
Wis: 18
Cha: 3

Compare that to a Sorcerer or Wizard who will have to sacrifice some "core" stats, and will be missing out on some saving throws, HP, or AC somewhere in there.